A writer's year

How much can you write without getting cramp? I’ve been doing some long days here in the studio, but after around 2,500-3,000 words, my fingers start to seize up.

The most I have ever written in one day is 6,000 words, but I could hardly turn a door handle at the end of it.

As a rule, I try not to work too late here in the mountains, partly because I want to get home to put the kids to bed and partly because the forest is creepy after dark.

Other studios and the campus are nearby, but so is the wildlife. Every bus and taxi driver in town has a tale of a cougar or bear encounter and they love telling them to frighten the tourists – it’s practically a civic duty.

In fact, it’s three years since anyone was killed by a bear around here and five years since the most recent cougar death. The number of road deaths in that period must be many times more but a traffic accident doesn’t loom nearly so large in the imagination after nightfall.

Official advice on how to deal with different types of wildlife is an art form all of its own.

Our first visit, seven years ago, was during the elk rutting season.

There were several hundred elk in town, hanging around like hoodlums on every street corner. It was common to walk along a path and find it blocked by a large yellow sign: “Warning: Aggressive Elk”, which necessitated a sharp detour.

During the rut, the males regard almost any encounter as a face-off. “Keep at least three bus lengths away!” the posters say.

June is an even dicier time: the females are calving and they can go quite demented in protecting their young.

When it comes to cougars, the advice is opposite.

If you encounter a cougar on a mountain path, you must face it squarely, maintain eye contact and if necessary pick up a stick in order to defend yourself.

“Above all, don’t run!” the literature commands.

In other words do not, under any circumstances, behave like dinner.

I like to believe I would have the presence of mind to stand my ground in such circumstances but knowing what a wimp I am when it comes to animals, I doubt it. Show me an urban street full of drunks and crack addicts and I would stroll down it without blinking – but anything furry?

How to behave with a bear seems worryingly dependent on how the bear behaves with you. If you come face to face with one, you are supposed to raise both arms in the air and talk to it, so it knows you’re human.

What, I wonder, would one say? “Hello, bear. I’m a human and we invented the atomic bomb, so don’t mess with me, buster.” Or, perhaps, in a wheedling tone: “Look, I’m an intellectual, there’s no meat on my bones, although it might improve my sales figures…”

Even if the bear charges towards you, you must stand your ground. Apparently, young male bears like to charge and swerve away at the last moment, just to be playful – great sense of humour, bears.

They may even give you a small cuff, and they are still only joking.

But if you think you are being attacked, then you should lie down on the ground and play dead, even if they nudge and nibble you a bit.

Here comes the best bit. The leaflet then says, and I quote: “If, however, this behaviour becomes feeding, then fight back.” Don’t you love the use of the verb there?

Or is there a danger we would keep talking to demonstrate we are human? “I say, bear, that’s my leg there. Gosh! That’s a bit out of order.”

Thankfully, my chances of a bear encounter are slim at this time of year – they are all hibernating up in the hills.

The only time resident writers here have had animal problems was when an elk decided to drop her calf slap back in the middle of the studios and they had to be closed for a few days until she moved on.

But, as a Canadian novelist said to me: “Hey, as excuses to my agent go, 'a crazed beast kept me from my computer' is at least original.”